KR, November 22, 2016 at 15:25 UTC

The Korea Exchange has launched KSM (Korea Startup Market) service that provides a marketplace where one can buy and sell equity shares of startup companies. Blocko Inc., a local blockchain startup company, participated in the project and adopted the blockchain technology in authentication of identity and documents. The KSM service has applied blockchain technology by using Coinstack, a blockchain-based development platform by Blocko Inc.

Blocko has secured the highest number of client references within Korea as a startup by providing its Coinstack platform to Korea's JB Bank, Lottecard, KISA, Paygate and others. Blocko raised a series A round funding of $1.3 million from Samsung Venture Investment Corporation in July 2016.

Won-Beom Kim, Blocko Inc. CEO, said, "This is the first commercialization example in which blockchain is applied to the Korean over-the counter stock market." He added, "We are striving to advance our product by partnering with Samsung SDS, CISCO and others to apply blockchain to a wide range of industries in the future, beyond existing uses such as bonds, promissory notes and points within the financial sector."

Coinstack is serviced in two ways, Cloud and On-premise, and supports all types of applications and protocols available via Bitcoin blockchain. Furthermore, Coinstack is a development platform that supports both blockchain-based contracts and Ethereum-based smart contracts, enabling companies to easily apply blockchain-based services.